NGO: Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld found guilty of war crimes

An international tribunal has found former US President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld guilty of the crime of conspiracy to allow torture in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram and Abu Ghraib.

Water boarding demonstration: The practice of Water boarding is a severe form of inhumane torture.

File photo

Also convicted were former White House legal advisors, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The the tribunal was organized by the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW), a non-governmental organization established under the laws of Malaysia. The court heard testimony from a number of victims, including Abbas Abid, who had his fingernails removed by pliers, Ali Shalal, who was electrocuted and hanged on a wall, and Jameelah Abbas Hameedi, who was stripped and beaten.

The five judges of the tribunal have held various prestigious judicial positions in Malaysia, the U.K. and the U.S. The results of the tribunal will be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

According to Foreign Policy Journal, the leader of the prosecution team, Professor Gurdial Singh Nijar, claims, “The tribunal was very careful to adhere scrupulously to the regulations drawn up by the Nuremberg courts and the International Criminal Courts.”

This decision follows a similar decision, earlier reported by PressTV, in which KLFCW found Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of war crimes for the invasion of Iraq.

Also, according to Foreign Policy Journal, Moazzam Begg, one of the torture victims who testified, said, “If President Bush was the President of extra-judicial torture, then US President Barak Obama is the President of extra judicial killing through drone strikes. Our work has only just begun.”